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farm soil condition News

Food needs can be met with a new vision for agriculture and science, say Brian Wynne and Georgina Catacora-Vargas. In mainstream policy and corporate thinking, scientific knowledge and global markets are considered key for food ...

Semios, the provider of real-time agricultural information for precision farming, offers two years of free soil moisture monitoring for their customers to optimize irrigation efficiencies, improving crop quality and yield. CEO Michael Gilbert said, “Water shortages have been tough for farmers. By fine-tuning irrigation to where and when it is most needed, farmers can protect their crops ...

By combining aquaculture with wet paddy farming in its coastal areas Bangladesh can meet food security and climate change issues, says a new report. The approach promises more nutritious food, without causing ...

By 2050, 80% of the earth’s population will live in cities and 3 billion more people will need to be fed. The simple fact is we are running out of available land to grow enough food to feed them. If we can’t grow our cities outward to find more arable land, the only solution is to grow them upwards. This may change the way we design cities forever. The problem is real and ...

The potential of no-tillage (NT) soils for increasing the soil organic carbon (SOC) pool must be critically and objectively assessed. Most of the previous studies about SOC accrual in NT soils have primarily focused on the surface layer (<20-cm soil depth), and not for the whole soil profile. The lack of adequate data on the SOC profile is a hindrance to conclusively ascertain the effects of ...

Soil isn’t one size fits all. It may look the same under your feet – but under a microscope, that’s a different story. A plant’s roots, tiny bugs – these things can tell one soil from another quite easily. Soil scientists typically measure different aspects of soil — how much air it contains, how well it retains water, heat, and more — to ...

A fire-free farming method practiced by early inhabitants of the Amazonian savannahs could help inform efforts to conserve and rehabilitate these important ecosystems around the world, a study has found. The research provides greater historic context for findings presented at a conference earlier this year (26 January), which suggested that slash-and-burn — in which trees are felled, left ...

Bolivian scientists have warned that growing international demand for quinoa is endangering local farming practices and the environment, as well as denying access to local consumers. Their caution follows the UN's ...

Dutch silage maize farmers can increase their yield in the long term by using earlier varieties. This was the conclusion reached by maize scientists at Wageningen UR based on many years of practical cultivation tests. The use of earlier varieties increases the chance that the maize will ripen properly and ensures better (soil) conditions for harvesting. Moreover, it would provide more space for ...

Switching to organic and resource-conserving methods of farming can improve smallholder crop yields, food security and income, a review study has found. But a more-extensive evidence base founded on rigorous and consistent ...

Nitrogen fertilizers from farm fields often end up in aquatic ecosystems, resulting in water quality problems, such as toxic algae and underwater ‘dead zones’. There are concerns that fertilizers used on lawns may also contribute to these problems. All of the lawns in the United States cover an area almost as large as Florida, making turfgrass our largest ‘crop’ and lawn ...

McGrath Family Farms' owner monitors his field, environmental and crop conditions from a cell phone OXNARD, Calif., - ClimateMinder announced today the deployment of its crop and irrigation monitoring and control solution for McGrath Family Farms. This system collects and monitors field, environmental and crop conditions from sensors in the field. Phil McGrath, owner of McGrath Family Farms ...

Grass strips at field margins are almost as valuable as hedgerows in encouraging diversity of soil creatures, according to new research. Six metre wide margin strips increase the number and variety of species such as earthworms, woodlice and beetles, and may act as corridors between isolated habitats. The study analysed the presence of invertebrates of three main feeding types - soil ingesters ...

After being drained by the millions of acres to make way for agriculture, wetlands are staging a small comeback these days on farms. Some farmers restore or construct wetlands alongside their fields to trap nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, and research shows these systems can also retain pesticides, antibiotics, and other agricultural pollutants. Important as these storage functions of wetlands ...

Agriculture experts say application of alternate wetting and drying (AWD) technology in Vietnam’s rice farms, one of South-East Asia’s largest rice-producing countries, holds great promise in cutting water use and greenhouse gas emissions from rice cultivation without sacrificing yield output. Vietnam along with Bangladesh and Colombia recently partnered with ...

In a recent study, researchers have defined the relationship between soil conditions and nutrients with the health of soil ecosystems. The results suggest that organic grassland, rich in phosphorus, is supportive of large populations of bigger invertebrates. All living things are made up of chemical elements in certain proportions and the availability of these elements in the environment can ...

Jojoba is one of the finest cosmetic ingredients in the world. Its excellent inherent emolliency, moisturization and oxidative stability properties rank it as one of the top cosmetic lipid materials, natural or synthetic, in use today. Jojoba is sourced from the seeds of Simmondsia chinensis, which is a woody, evergreen, desert shrub being grown in Desert of India. Jojoba seeds are a dark, ...

CJP scientists are continuously working on enhanced genetics, agronomics and horticulture sciences to drive new varieties, more knowledge around the Jatropha plant’s nutritional requirements and more science-based processes for the care and custody of the plant and have achieved reliable and scalable results in Jatropha energy farming. Reliance on inorganic ...

The economic and environmental benefits of Anaerobic Digestion (AD) as a means of producing renewable energy are already well documented. But one aspect of the industry often overlooked are the opportunities to put the leftover material, produced by the AD process, to good use. It’s a subject worth a much closer look, because the fertiliser produced by the generation of biogas can play a ...

Rohana Rosairo has hung a sprig of paddy rice over his front door, a good omen for prosperity from the first harvest he reaped a few weeks ago from a long unused field. Rosairo's field, across a dirt track from his home, was just a mass of weeds until April when he cleared the plot and planted seed paddy. 'My father used to grow rice here, but he stopped a long time ago,' he said. High salinity ...